Staff UX Researcher, Qualitative, AI/ML Developer Journeys

Minimum qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Human-Computer Interaction, Cognitive Science, Statistics, Psychology, Anthropology, related field, or equivalent practical experience.
  
• 8 years of experience in an applied research setting, or similar.
  
• 3 years of experience conducting qualitative research including online and in person methods.
• Experience with research design utilizing various methods (e.g., usability studies, contextual inquiry, surveys, etc.).
  

Preferred qualifications:

• Master's degree or PhD in Human-Computer Interaction, Cognitive Science, Statistics, Psychology, Anthropology, or related field.
• 10 years of experience conducting UX research on products.
• 7 years of experience working with executive leadership (e.g., Director level and above).
• 5 years of experience managing projects, and working in a large, matrixed organization.
• Experience conducting research in complex technological domains within cloud computing environments and developer tools and environments such as command-line interface (CLI) UIs, configuration files, databases, compute, Kubernetes, and networking.
• Experience conducting research in AI/ML.

10 years of experience conducting UX research on products.10 years of experience conducting UX research on products.

About the job

At Google, we follow a simple but vital premise: "Focus on the user and all else will follow." User Experience Researchers (UXRs) make this possible.

Google User Experience (UX) is made up of multi-disciplinary teams of UX Designers, Researchers, Writers, Content Strategists, Program Managers, and Engineers: we care deeply about the people who use our products. The UX team plays an integral part in gathering insights about the needs, attitudes, emotions, and behaviors of people who use our products to inspire and inform design. We collaborate closely with each other and with engineering and product management to create industry-leading products that deliver value for the people who use them, and for Google’s businesses.

As a User Experience Researcher (UXR), you’ll help your team of UXers, product managers, and engineers understand user needs. You’ll work with stakeholders across functions and levels and have impact at all stages of product development. You’ll play a critical role in creating useful, usable, and delightful products. You’ll explore user behaviors and motivations by conducting primary research such as field studies, interviews, diary studies, participatory workshops, ethnography, surveys, usability testing, and logs analysis.

The UXR community at Google is unique and will help you do your best work. You’ll have the opportunity to work with and learn from UXRs across Google through regular meetups, mentor programs, and access to internal research tools.

The Core team builds the technical foundation behind Google’s flagship products. We are owners and advocates for the underlying design elements, developer platforms, product components, and infrastructure at Google. These are the essential building blocks for excellent, safe, and coherent experiences for our users and drive the pace of innovation for every developer. We look across Google’s products to build central solutions, break down technical barriers and strengthen existing systems. As the Core team, we have a mandate and a unique opportunity to impact important technical decisions across the company.

The US base salary range for this full-time position is $178,000-$265,000 + bonus + equity + benefits. Our salary ranges are determined by role, level, and location. Within the range, individual pay is determined by work location and additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for your preferred location during the hiring process.

Please note that the compensation details listed in US role postings reflect the base salary only, and do not include bonus, equity, or benefits. Learn more about benefits at Google.

Responsibilities

• Lead foundational qualitative research to understand the complex needs, pain points, and workflows of Google's ML developers and data scientists, shaping the core AI/ML tools.
• Transform technical complexity into user-centered solutions by defining research questions and validating ML reference architectures.
• Set the AI research agenda by identifying and leading foundational research into ambiguous and strategic questions about human-AI collaboration, directly influencing the strategy for Google's AI infrastructure.
• Collaborate across teams (PMs, Engineers, Designers, etc.) to gather requirements, build consensus, and ensure solutions meet user needs and Google's strategic goals.
• Contribute to the strategic goals for ML solutions and measure the impact of research on product outcomes, moving beyond incremental work to establish best practices for the entire field of AI development.